From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Tue Oct 13 2009 - 08:38:32 EDT
Threat Persists in Yemen, Somalia
. By GERALD F. SEIB
* OCTOBER 13, 2009
While Washington obsessed Monday over President Barack Obama's plans in
Afghanistan, as well as over a new burst of violence next door in Pakistan,
some unsettling news arrived to remind everyone that the extremist threat
isn't limited to those troubled countries.
Reports from Yemen said government forces had killed 59 Shiite rebels in the
country's north. The death toll is a sign of the intensity of the
government's current fight against a Shiite revolt that has forced tens of
thousands of Yemenis out of their homes.
Combine that revolt in the north with separatist unrest in the south and a
growing al Qaeda movement, all in the Arab world's poorest country bordering
Saudi Arabia, and you have a recipe for the kind of incubator for trouble
that Afghanistan became before the 9/11 attacks. Lest we forget, barely a
year has passed since al Qaeda forces struck the U.S. Embassy in the Yemeni
capital of Sanaa.
Meanwhile, a second nation, this one in Africa, is moving much further down
the track toward failed-state status and becoming a haven for Islamic
extremists. It's Somalia, where Islamist militias are not only battling a
virtually powerless central government, but over the weekend threatened to
advance across the border to hit targets in Kenya as well.
Somali President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed visited the U.S. in recent days
and warned that "a foreign idea" is taking hold in his country; he didn't
mention foreign terrorists, but that's what he meant. The State Department's
most recent terrorism report says that al Qaeda "elements" are benefiting
"from safe haven in the regions of southern Somalia."
Taken together, the reports from Yemen and Somalia present a vivid reminder
that al Qaeda became a direct threat during the 1990s precisely because it
was able to fill the power vacuum that Afghanistan had become. That could
happen again in Afghanistan or Pakistan, of course -- but not only there.
Happily, the other threats aren't going wholly unnoticed. In Somalia, U.S.
military commandos just last month launched a daring helicopter assault in
which they took out the most-wanted al Qaeda operative in that land, a man
named Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, along with his bodyguards. Mr. Nabhan, long on
the Federal Bureau of Investigation's most-wanted list, was suspected of
building the truck bomb that killed 15 people in a Kenya hotel in 2002, and
of choreographing a failed missile launch at an Israeli airliner.
Meanwhile, Mr. Obama a few weeks ago sent a letter of support to Yemeni
President Ali Abdullah Saleh, U.S. officials said. According to Yemen's
state news agency, the letter pledged help in "the fight against terrorism"
and said the U.S. will "stand beside Yemen, its unity, security and
stability."
Those are signs that the national-security apparatus isn't asleep at the
switch as these problems grow. The question is whether the broader U.S.
political system is too overloaded with the Afghanistan debate to act
against dangers elsewhere. Fighting extremism, after all, is like squeezing
a balloon; when flattened in one place, it tends to bulge somewhere else.
That's particularly important to keep in mind because, despite the turmoil
in Afghanistan and Pakistan, U.S. analysts think the fight against al Qaeda
in those countries has diminished the terror group's ability to operate. The
most recent State Department report on terrorism says that, over the past
year or so, al Qaeda and "associated networks continued to lose ground, both
structurally and in the court of world public opinion."
Yet like-minded Islamic extremists in places such as Yemen and Somalia can
pick up the cause, with or without guidance from al Qaeda's home office.
The danger is most acute in Somalia, where lawlessness is rampant. The
central government controls little outside the capital of Mogadishu, and not
all of that city, international reports indicate. Meanwhile, the Islamist
movement al Shabaab is led by men affiliated with al Qaeda, some of whom
fought with it in Afghanistan, the State Department reports. The only good
news in Somalia is that the Islamists have spent some of their time and
energy in recent weeks fighting among themselves.
In the long run, Yemen may be the more worrisome spot. It is, after all, the
ancestral homeland of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, and it has a close
relationship with oil-rich Saudi Arabia, whose monarchy is a perpetual bin
Laden target. Al Qaeda-affiliated groups already have claimed responsibility
for a list of small-scale attacks in Yemen over the past two years; Yemenis'
broader role is underscored by the fact that 92 of the 221 remaining terror
detainees at Guantanamo Bay prison are Yemenis.
The good news is that Mr. Saleh retains a good measure of control and wants
help dealing with the threat, meaning it may be easier to help. Juan Zarate,
a terrorism adviser to George W. Bush, says the best bet in Somalia may be a
policy aimed at simply containing extremists there. But in Yemen, he says,
hopes are brighter because of "a government that has some resources and some
willingness to work with us," as well as neighbors who are at least as
concerned as is the U.S.
Write to Gerald F. Seib at <mailto:jerry.seib@wsj.com> jerry.seib@wsj.com
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